tone fairly wrung the promise from him.
“I’m a rotten low-down beast!” he said between his clenched teeth. “I can say I will, Arla, but I don’t even know if I can do what I say I will.”
“Yes, you can!” said Arla in the tone of a mother determined to save her young. “You shall! I’ll help you! I’ll make you. When you’re weak, then I’ll be strong for you! I’ve got to! I’ll die if you can’t be brought back to be a decent man again!”
For a long time his face was hidden on her shoulder, and his whole frame shook with emotion, but her arms were about him, and she held him close, her tears raining down unheeded upon his bowed head.
At last he said in a low tone husky with emotion, “If you can love me like that after all I’ve done to you, then perhaps I can! I’ll try!”
Then eagerly she lifted his face to hers and their lips met, their tears mingling.
It was sometime after that that Arla spoke, gently, quietly.
“Now, oughtn’t we to be doing something about a boat to go back on?”
Carter looked up and his capable business expression came upon him.
“I think first, perhaps, I’d better cable to that man that made the offer about the business. He’ll maybe go back on it, or have done something else already, you know.”
“You’re right!” said Arla. “Let’s go together. I can’t be separated from you now till it’s all fixed.”
“Yes, come!” he said, catching her fingers. “Oh, Arla, there’s maybe something for us somewhere, when you can love me like this!”
Thus Arla entered on her life undertaking of making a man.
“This diamond,” she said thoughtfully, looking at the gorgeous ring on her finger, “and those pearls. Are they paid for, Carter?”
She watched him keenly as the slow color mounted to his forehead again, and his eyes took on a shamed look.
“Because if they’re not,” she hastened to say, “let’s send them back, I mean take them back or something.
They’re not really mine, you know. They never were. You got them for her, and I think of it every time I look at them. Someday when we can afford it, you can get me some of my own, and I’d like that much better.”
Carter went and stood by the window, looking out with unseeing eyes. His perceptions were turned inside to himself. He was seeing just what kind of a contemptible failure he had been. Seeing it as nothing else but utter failure could have made him see.
“There’s no end to it!” he moaned hoarsely.
“Yes, we’ll get to the end of it, only let’s make a clean sweep now once and forever. Suppose we sit down while we’re waiting for the answer to that cable and write down a list of things that have to go back or be sold or something, and debts that have to be paid. Don’t forget anything. Let’s just look it all in the face and know where we stand.”
“We don’t have a place to stand!” said the disheartened man. “Every foot of ground under us is mortgaged. That’s what you’ve—what we’ve—what I’ve brought you to, Arla!”
Arla’s eyes had a strange light of hope in them as she looked at him. He hadn’t said she had brought him to that. He had started to, but he hadn’t said it. He had acknowledged that he had done it himself! There was some hope.
They had about a week to wait for the boat they had decided to take, and they went to cheap lodgings and made little excursions here and there on foot, seeing what they could of the old world in a humble way. Perhaps nothing could have better prepared Carter to go from a life of extravagance into plain homely economy like taking their pleasure without cost. For Arla wouldn’t let them spend an unnecessary cent. She had everything down to the last penny now, and was determined that they should get free from debt.
“Someday,” said Carter, watching a young couple, obviously on their wedding trip as they entered a handsome automobile and drove happily away, “someday I’ll bring you over here, and we’ll see Europe in the right way.”
“Perhaps not,” said Arla, her lips set with determination. “We’ve got to get over expecting things like that. If we ever get rich, it might happen, and then of course it would be great, but it isn’t likely, not for a long time anyway, and we’re not going to expect it nor